Imi Knoebel
25 Oct 2014 - 15 Feb 2015
Imi Knoebel
Cut-up 5, 2011
acrylic, aluminum, PE tube
232 x 257.3 x 13 cm
Collection of Olga and Stella Knoebel, photo: Ivo Faber
Cut-up 5, 2011
acrylic, aluminum, PE tube
232 x 257.3 x 13 cm
Collection of Olga and Stella Knoebel, photo: Ivo Faber
IMI KNOEBEL
Works 1966 − 2014
25 October 2014 - 15 February 2015
In celebration of Imi Knoebel’s 75th birthday, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg will be the first institution worldwide in nearly twenty years to present a comprehensive exhibition of the oeuvre of this important German artist. Imi Knoebel. Works 1966 – 2014 features major works and groups of works, from the Line Paintings (1966) and Room 19 (1968/2006), to Eigentum Himmelreich [Property of Heaven] (1983) and the aluminum paintings from the 1990s, all the way to his most recent works.
As a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf Knoebel had already developed a basic formal vocabulary, which he used to create rigorously abstract paintings. Kazimir Malevich, the painter of the Black Square (1915), provided him with a matrix for an approach to art that goes beyond the “world of things.” Even Knoebel’s very first installation, Room 19, built in 1968 while he was still at the academy, reveals a fundamental characteristic of his oeuvre: the questioning of painting’s relationship to space.
For Imi Knoebel, every single painting is part of a constantly expanding body of work. To this day the artist goes back to earlier works, adding to them, enlarging upon them, or reinterpreting them. The creative process he has employed throughout his career is reflected in the presentation. The 40-x-40-meter exhibition hall offers accommodating, open, and generous architecture in which to display his work. In it, the artist, who is designing the exhibition himself, is placing “three diagonal walls that cross the gigantic space, opening up paths”, as Imi Knoebel explains. Even though he is looking back through almost fifty years, his show is not historical. At the start, he says, the show features “just the beginnings actually—and then everything gets mixed up!”
Works 1966 − 2014
25 October 2014 - 15 February 2015
In celebration of Imi Knoebel’s 75th birthday, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg will be the first institution worldwide in nearly twenty years to present a comprehensive exhibition of the oeuvre of this important German artist. Imi Knoebel. Works 1966 – 2014 features major works and groups of works, from the Line Paintings (1966) and Room 19 (1968/2006), to Eigentum Himmelreich [Property of Heaven] (1983) and the aluminum paintings from the 1990s, all the way to his most recent works.
As a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf Knoebel had already developed a basic formal vocabulary, which he used to create rigorously abstract paintings. Kazimir Malevich, the painter of the Black Square (1915), provided him with a matrix for an approach to art that goes beyond the “world of things.” Even Knoebel’s very first installation, Room 19, built in 1968 while he was still at the academy, reveals a fundamental characteristic of his oeuvre: the questioning of painting’s relationship to space.
For Imi Knoebel, every single painting is part of a constantly expanding body of work. To this day the artist goes back to earlier works, adding to them, enlarging upon them, or reinterpreting them. The creative process he has employed throughout his career is reflected in the presentation. The 40-x-40-meter exhibition hall offers accommodating, open, and generous architecture in which to display his work. In it, the artist, who is designing the exhibition himself, is placing “three diagonal walls that cross the gigantic space, opening up paths”, as Imi Knoebel explains. Even though he is looking back through almost fifty years, his show is not historical. At the start, he says, the show features “just the beginnings actually—and then everything gets mixed up!”